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I am very happy to connect with all the listeners of All India Radio on World Radio day. World Radio Day is observed by UNESCO since year 2012. Last year the theme was on Radio and sports. This year, the theme is dialogue, tolerance and peace. I think it's a very interesting theme, coinciding with the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi ji always stood for peace, tolerance and dialogue. So in that sense, it's an interesting coincidence that UNESCO has also chosen this topic for World Radio Day.

RSTV and Prasar Bharti CEO, Shashi Shekhar Vempati said that 2018 has been a memorable year as the digital reach of public broadcasters increased manifold. He also praised RSTV for its phenomenol growth on YouTube and subscribers crossing 1.5 million saying that the channel's digital growth is purely organic and it's only because of rich content.

Electrification not just brings houses out of darkness but it also brings its inhabitants out of social and economical backwardness as it ensures access to Television and Internet, which in turn, connect people with the world.

For generation X and millenials, the name Doordarshan has a nostalgic and emotional connect as they grew up watching it. In their formation years, Doordarshan contributed to their social and cultural awareness as much as school and college contributed to their intellectual growth. But as 2000s witnessed the entry of a plethora of private channels in the TV industry, for post-millenials, Doordarshan became just another but credible TV name.

Had started the new year with a trip down to All India Radio’s heritage buildings near Parliament. A little known fact about this pre-Independence era facility is that it also houses the central archives of Prasar Bharati both on the television and on the radio side.

Much of the public discourse on Swachh Bharat has tended to be mired in the miasma of statistics and partisan cynicism with objectivity more often than not missing. Few commentators if any have focused on what it takes to effect societal level behavioral change on a mass scale in a billion people democracy.

Much of the public debate on the role and relevance of the Public Broadcaster in India tends to find be along the twin extremes of either an adversarial role or a propagandist role for the public broadcaster. Lost in the din and the dust of this polarized debate is the arduous task the public broadcaster has set for itself of telling the India Story.